HSU IT Department

I thought this clip would be up on YouTube dozens of times, but there were only two! Apologies for the annoying fuzzy text over about 30 seconds near the end -- my only other option was the BBC's official clip, but they cut it short so it ends before the fade-in of the field of poppies. Which is, you know, kind of necessary for the full impact.




In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below...


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This is the best Flashman by far, for my money: fast, funny, outrageous. Flashy is at the top of his game, surviving not only the Charge of the Light Brigade (and the Heavy Brigade, for that matter) but also a hashish-fuelled berserker raid to blow up two barges loaded with weapons and ammunition to prevent the "Ruskis" from taking India away from the British. I laughed until I cried at his account of farting his way through the hail of bullets and cannon at Balaclava, and I have absolutely no doubt that Count Ignatieff will surface someday like a bad penny, and probably try to kill him again :D

I'm reminded of Capt. Edmund Blackadder's attempt to get out of "the big push" during WWI by calling in a favor owed him by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, for having saved Haig's life from a pygmy Watusi woman armed with "a viciously sharp slice of mango." Heh heh. I can just picture old Flashy sticking pencils up his nose and going "Wibble."

Close on the heels of my favorite Flash is my least favorite, Flashman and the Great Game. It's a page-turner because there's lots going on, for sure, but Flashy's creative cowardice and ridiculous predicaments can't compensate for the rivers of blood and gruesome atrocities of the Indian Mutiny of 1857. There are still some good bits (his escort of Thomas Henry Kavanagh through the midnight streets of Lucknow is pretty damn funny), and of course the historical details are as always excellent, but even Flash seems sobered and (at least momentarily) appalled by what he's been through. This one I won't be reading again, it's just too brutal.